It's Gotta Be the Shoes

As the snow falls down from the dark winter sky here in good old Syracuse, New York, it reminds me of a night over 10 years ago when I was playing an intramural basketball game in college. I had purchased a new pair of sneakers that day and wore them to the game. They felt a bit snug but nothing too out of the ordinary. There was a lot of running and stopping as is typical in a fast paced game of this sort. My toes were starting to hurt, but I figured it was just normal soreness from the new shoes and played through the discomfort. But finally, I had to stop. I sat down and took my shoes off and thought I would just re-adjust things to make the sneakers more comfortable. But as I tried to get the shoes back on, I could not do so because of the pain. Confused, I pulled off my socks to get a better look at my toes and I was aghast at what I saw. Both big toenails were literally purple and pushed up from the accumulated blood underneath the nail. Turns out, the blood had actually clotted under both nails due to the tight fitting shoes and constant stopping of my feet, which was jamming my big toes up against the front of the shoe, repeatedly traumatizing them.

It was late and everyone I knew had left as I sat there trying to figure out what to do next. I figured I would just go back to my room and that this would slowly go away. But then I realized this wasn't going to go away any time soon and that I needed medical help. I thought I would be able to fight through the pain and put my feet in the shoes but it was just impossible, no matter how hard I tried. My car was parked deep in the lot on a cold snowy night, and I had no choice. I walked barefoot all the way through the snow to my car. As you can imagine, that was not a fun experience. There was no point wearing the socks over my feet because they were already wet.

I arrived at the local urgent care center and the doctor took a look. He said he was going to take a hot needle and stick it through my toenail to relieve the pressure and let the blood come out. The funny thing was that I normally would associate this with being painful but I was in so much pain from the blood underneath the toenails that the feeling of the needle going through the nail was actually the best feeling in the world at the time and did not hurt a bit due to the relief it provided. The nails fell off a few weeks later and grew back later. So let this be a lesson to people out there to avoid wearing sneakers for the first time during a new game. Walk around in them first to break them in.